Introduction to execution policies

Processors have transitioned from focusing on increasing the speed of individual cores to incorporating multiple cores for enhanced performance. For developers, this means the potential to execute multiple instructions concurrently across these cores, improving application efficiency and responsiveness.

This move to multi-core configurations highlights the importance of integrating parallel programming techniques. With the advent of C++17, C++ made notable progress in this domain by introducing the <execution> header.

The <execution> header– enabling parallelism in STL algorithms

Before C++17, although the STL provided a comprehensive suite of algorithms, they were executed sequentially. This sequential operation meant that STL algorithms did not fully utilize the capabilities of multi-core processors.

The <execution> header addresses this limitation. Instead of adding new algorithms, it enhances existing ones...